Ajay Lamba, Key Investigator In Asaram Case, Couldn’t Send His Daughter To School Owing To Threats

IWB Post

April 25, 2018

“The letters carried abuses and threatened they would kill my family if anything happened to Asaram,” shares Ajay Pal Lamba recollecting the letters that he received from Asaram Bapu’s followers.

Lamba was the deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Jodhpur West, when he got on board for the most high profile as well as the most controversial case of his career on August 20, 2013.

An Indian Police Service officer from the 2005 batch, Lamba is sure to remember what happened after he started his investigation on the Asaram case. What followed was constant attention from the media, killing of witnesses and incessant threats by Asaram’s followers.

According to a report by Hindustan Times,Lamba shared, “My phone would not stop ringing and I stopped receiving calls from unknown numbers. The letters stopped only when I shifted to Udaipur.”

It was a rather trying time for him as he received over 2000 threatening letters from Asaram’s followers. Such was the condition that he didn’t send his daughter to school for a while and his wife also stopped stepping out from the house.

He recollects how the most tricky part of the case was to pick Asaram from his Indore ashram. After Asaram did not appear before the team of policemen from Jodhpur his arrest became a major task for the department.

“When my 11-member team went to deliver a summon notice to the Asaram at his ashram in Madhya Pradesh, they faced a mob of about 8,000 people. My team was shoved and it took them 10 hours just to be able to deliver that piece of paper,” Lamba shares.

Even after they successfully got a hold of Asaram it wasn’t an easy task. Lamba recollects, “He requested that he be taken by flight and the police agreed. During the night, he was talking to his kids in Sindhi and asked them to amass 25,000 of his supporters by morning. ‘I’ll see how they’ll take me then’, he said on the phone. One of my men understood Sindhi and his plan was foiled.”

Asaram was then taken to a guest house in Jodhpur. Lamba shares, “When I entered the room, he was sitting on a sofa. I told him to get off and sit on the floor. The very moment he confessed that he made a mistake.”

It is after multiple statements including the victim’s and Asaram’s potency test that the case found a shape and all thanks to Lamba and other dedicated members of the team that Asaram has been given life imprisonment in the 2013 rape case.

Lamba who is now the superintendent of police (anti-corruption bureau) in Jodhpur took to Facebook earlier today to share the news and express his feelings at the verdict. He wrote, “Finally truth prevailed. Justice delivered in Asharam Bapu case with the conviction of accused Asaram in a case of sexual assault on a minor girl during the night of Independence day of 2013.”

He expressed that the judgement is a “landmark in criminal jurisprudence in the country.” He further added, “It is heartening to witness that if the law of land is implemented impartially, then even weakest can afford to take on the might of most influential person like Asaram.”